Mariah Carey ‘Christmas’ Case, Diddy Trial, 50 Cent Lawsuit & More Top Music Law News

This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.

This week: Mariah Carey wants payback after winning a lawsuit over “All I Want for Christmas is You”; Diddy’s trial judge says jurors can see an infamous surveillance video; 50 Cent sues to stop the release of a movie he stars in; and much more.

THE BIG STORY: Mariah’s Christmas Revenge

To paraphrase a legendary line from HBO’s The Wire: “If you come at the queen, you best not miss.”

A month after the Queen of Christmas defeated a copyright lawsuit over her holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas is You,” Mariah Carey and other defendants in the case are now seeking legal revenge – demanding that the songwriter who filed the action repay the legal bills they spent defending it.

Vince Vance claimed that “All I Want” ripped off his own earlier song of the same name, but a federal judge tossed the case out last month, citing experts who said the songs shared mostly just “commonplace Christmas song clichés.” The judge even said that some of Vance’s filings were so “frivolous” that he’d need to reimburse Carey and others the money the spent beating them.

In a motion earlier this month, Carey and others argued that Vance and his lawyers must hand over a whopping $180,000 to pay for those baseless filings. They said they had been “perfectly justified” in paying high rates to teams of elite lawyers because Vance had been seeking drastic remedies, including $20 million in damages and the “destruction of all copies” of the song.

Vance’s attorneys responded last week, arguing that Carey’s demand was “simply not reasonable” and that his lawsuit, while unsuccessful, had been a legitimate use of the court system. Saying the award should not exceed $70,000 at the very most, they warned that the full fine could bankrupt an “elderly man” who does not have “vast resources.”

“The plaintiff is elder and living off his music catalog and some touring,” the songwriter’s attorneys wrote. “One artist should not push another artist to the brink of a financial collapse.”

Will the judge aim to deter future bad copyright cases by punishing Vance? Or be swayed by his pleas for mercy? Stay tuned at Billboard in the months ahead to find out.

Other top stories this week…

DIDDY TRIAL LOOMS – With jury selection set to begin next week, a federal judge issued a key pre-trial ruling that an infamous 2016 surveillance video of Sean “Diddy” Combs assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel can be played for jurors at his sex trafficking trial. Diddy’s attorneys had argued the clip has been deceptively edited and would “unfairly confuse and mislead the jury”; prosecutors blasted that argument as a “desperate” attempt by Combs to avoid “crushing” evidence of his crimes.

JAY-Z LIBEL SUIT – The star’s unnamed rape accuser and her attorney Tony Buzbee asked a federal judge to dismiss the rapper’s defamation lawsuit against them, arguing they cannot be sued over claims they made as part of a court case. They cited the “fair report privilege” – a legal doctrine that largely immunizes legal proceedings from libel liability. And they said that a headline-grabbing NBC News interview, in which she echoed her claims about Jay-Z, was protected under the same legal logic.

MOVIE BATTLE – 50 Cent filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking the release of an upcoming horror movie called SkillHouse in which he plays the starring role, claiming he never signed a final agreement and had not been paid. The rapper (Curtis Jackson) says he filmed his scenes because he trusted that a deal would eventually be reached, but it never was: “Nevertheless, defendants have billed Jackson as the star and producer of the film [and] have shamelessly and deceptively marketed the film as a ’50 Cent Movie’ and ‘produced by 50 Cent,’ when it is nothing of the sort.”

SHADY SETTLEMENT – Eminem’s publisher reached a settlement to end a copyright lawsuit it filed against a Ford dealership near his hometown of Detroit – a case that claimed the company used the rapper’s “Lose Yourself” in TikTok videos that warned viewers they would “only get one shot” to buy a special edition truck. Eminem doesn’t own Eight Mile Style and was not involved in the lawsuit.

COOKIE INFRINGEMENT – Warner Music Group filed a copyright lawsuit against cookie chain Crumbl, claiming the Utah-based company used more than 159 songs by artists such as Lizzo, Mariah Carey, Ariana Grande and Beyoncé in TikTok and Instagram videos without permission. The case against Crumbl is the latest in a rash of lawsuits accusing commercial brands of using easily-available music in social media ads without the necessary synch licenses – cases that have targeted Marriott, NBA teams, Chili’s, and the University of Southern California.